Return to the Stars: Evidence for the Impossible Read Free

microbe—just as I think (which is why I gave this example) that we have reached the stage when we must replace the obsolete methods by new ones.
     
    In spite of all the objections to it, there is nothing farfetched about my forecast that in the not too distant future it will be possible to freeze astronauts, thaw them out again on a set date and restore the use of their functions. Professor Alan Sterling Parkes, member of the National Institute for Medical Research in London, supports the view that by the early 1970's medical science will already have perfected a method of preserving organs for transplants indefinitely at low temperatures.
     
    Anyway, the whole has always been equal to the sum of its parts, which is why I am convinced that my forecast is right.
     
    In all experiments on animals, one problem that constantly recurs is how to keep the brain cells alive, since they die rapidly without oxygen. The fact that research teams of the US Navy, the US Air Force, as well as firms such as General Electric and the Rand Corporation, are working full time on it shows how seriously the solution of this problem is taken. The first reports of success come from the Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, where the brains of five rhesus monkeys were separated from their bodies and kept functioning for as much as eighteen hours. The separated brains reacted unhesitatingly to noises.
     
    These experiments are basically connected with the idea of constructing a 'cyborg' (the abbreviation of 'cybernetic organism'). In a speech the German physicist and cyberneticist Herbert W. Franke put forward the sensational idea that in the decades to come space-ships would journey to unknown planets without astronauts aboard and search the universe for extraterrestrial intelligences. Space patrols without astronauts? Franke assumes that the electronic equipment would be operated by a brain separated from a human body. This 'solo' brain, kept in a liquid culture medium which would have to be constantly replenished with fresh blood, would be the control centre of the spaceship. Franke thinks that the brain of an unborn child would be the most suitable for programming, because, not being burdened with mental processes, it could be fed with the data and information necessary for the special tasks of space travel. This programmed brain would lack the consciousness that makes normal brains 'human'. Herbert W. Franke says: 'Stimulations, as we know them, would be alien to the cyborg. It would have no feelings. The human solo brain is promoted to ambassador of our planet.' Roger A. MacGowan also predicts a cyborg, half living being, half machine. In the view of this scientific authority the cyborg will ultimately reach the stage of a completely electronic 'being', whose functions are programmed in a solo brain and translated into orders by the latter.
     
    The Frankfurt Jesuit Paul Overhage who enjoys considerable fame as a biologist, said about this fantastic project for the future: 'Its realisation can scarcely be doubted because the rapid progress of biotechnology is constantly making it easier to carry out experiments of this kind.'
     
    During the last two decades molecular biology and biochemistry have advanced very rapidly and achieved results which have completely changed a great deal of medical science and practice. The ability to slow down the process of ageing or even interrupt it completely lies within our grasp, and even the fantastic construction of a cyborg has already been removed from the realm of pure imagination.
     
    Naturally these projects create moral and ethical problems which will perhaps be harder to solve than the actual medico-technical problems. But all this will fade into insignificance if we keep our eye on the other highly probable possibility that one day space-ships will reach such incredible speeds that they can traverse cosmic distances even within the normal life span of astronauts.
     
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